1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backlight assembly and a liquid crystal display device having the backlight assembly. More particularly, the present invention relates to a backlight assembly having improved image display quality and a liquid crystal display device employing the backlight assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices display images in accordance with data processed by an information processing apparatus. A liquid crystal display (LCD) device is a type of display device that displays images using liquid crystal. In order to display images, liquid crystal molecules are rearranged according to electric fields applied to the liquid crystal.
The LCD device does not emit light, but rather changes transmissivity of light. Therefore, the LCD device requires a light source in order to display images. The LCD device employs a backlight assembly as the light source. The backlight assembly may be classified as either an edge illumination type or a direct illumination type depending on a position of lamps in the backlight assembly.
In the edge illumination type backlight assembly, a lamp is disposed at a position adjacent to a side face of a light guide plate. The edge illumination type backlight assembly is mainly used for small-sized display devices such as a laptop computer, a mobile phone, etc.
In the direct illumination type backlight assembly, a plurality of lamps are disposed under a diffusion plate. A luminance of the direct illumination type backlight assembly is higher than that of the edge illumination type backlight assembly. Thus, the direct illumination type backlight assembly is mainly used for large-sized display devices such as television displays.
A conventional direct illumination type backlight assembly has straight type lamps arranged substantially parallel to each other. The straight type lamps are fixed by a plurality of lamp-fixing members. For example, one of the straight type lamps is fixed by at least one lamp-fixing member disposed at each end portion of the straight type lamps. Thus, when a number of straight type lamps increases, a number of the lamp-fixing members also increases. For example, when the conventional direct illumination type backlight assembly employs six straight type lamps, twelve lamp-fixing members are required in order to fix the six straight type lamps. Therefore, both the cost and time of manufacturing the backlight assembly increase, thereby lowering productivity.